Pages

Sunday, July 30, 2017

In the introduction to Amish farmer and minister David Kline’s book, “Letters From Larksong,” are these words by one of his friends, poet Wendell Berry:

.... my friend David Kline told me,

"It falls strangely on Amish ears,

This talk of how you find yourself.

We Amish, after all, don't try

To find ourselves. We try to lose

Ourselves"--and thus are lost within

The found world of sunlight and rain

Where fields are green and then are ripe,

And the people eat together by

The charity of God, who is kind

Even to those who give no thanks.

Our July 20-22 Virginia Mennonite Conference Assembly proved to be another great time of uplifting worship, inspirational messages and meeting with friends and fellow believers I've grown to love and appreciate over my past fifty years of ministry.

Sadly, VMC, like many other Mennonite communions across the land, is faced with some dwindling numbers due to individuals and congregations leaving the church for a variety of reasons. This brings about feelings of grief over the "loss of loved ones", sisters and brothers who've been so much a part of our church family. We're all left with fears over how we might stem these losses.

This year's assembly theme was "Neighbors: Strangers No More", a special focus on the church reaching out to include new immigrants, refugees and other alienated and disenfranchised people in our communities. The evening services and all of the workshops highlighted these concerns.

In our delegate sessions, however, we largely went about business as usual, as in dealing with finances, discussing church policies, and trying to find consensus on the wording of our conference's vision statement. Good things to think about, and in some ways all important. But I couldn't help but wonder, what would happen if we were to spend the bulk of our business session time in how to extravagantly invest ourselves and our resources in the service of others, and less on efforts to define and preserve ourselves and our future as a conference?

In other words, might Jesus' admonitions about not saving or preserving our personal lives (but to take radical risks of losing them) also apply to our corporate lives as churches and church institutions?

I love my church family, and so much want to see it preserved. But Jesus's way of accomplishing this may be counterintuitive. He would have us save ourselves not so much by building, staffing and financing our programs and institutions, but by radically giving ourselves and our assets away.

Friday, July 28, 2017

One of last Sunday's scripture texts included Jesus's story of someone planting a field of wheat, then having an enemy sow noxious weed seeds in that field while the farmer slept.

When the owner of the field was asked by his servants whether they should root out the unwanted weeds he told them to wait for the harvest to separate the good from the bad.

In explaining the parable's meaning, Jesus says the field is the world, the wheat represents God's people and the weeds, evildoers. Let them both grow together, he said, until God separates them at the last judgment.

This passage has been a source of confusion for those who assume this means that the church therefore exercises no discernment as to who is a follower of Jesus and who is not. This would contradict what is taught in passages like Matthew 18 and other texts which counsel us to meet with a erring person privately to bring about restoration, then if needed take another caring person with us to make another appeal, then involve the whole congregation if necessary to discern whether that person is to remain loved and cared for as a member or to be loved and re-evangelized equally warmly as an outsider. The church continues to love and care in either case.

But this parable is not about the church but about the world. In other words, followers of Jesus are not to go about seeking and destroying God's enemies, going after unbelievers or persecuting members of ISIS or others who are clearly living in ways that are counter to the life and teachings of Jesus. Let God be the judge of all outsiders, Jesus is saying, meanwhile we are to go about the business of simply being a faithful community of Jesus followers.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

The following is based on research done by Julie Bender, a member of the local Valley Justice Coalition:“Jim," age 20, is serving a six-month sentence at the Rockingham-Harrisonburg Regional Jail, charged with grand larceny. It appears he may have been under the influence of street drugs and/or Xanax at the time of the offense, not fully comprehending the trouble he was causing itsconsequences.

One might ask whether options other than incarceration should have been considered. If so, the following questions might have been considered:

● What would appropriate consequences be for breaking and entering a private home and stealing a used flat screen TV? In Jim’s case, this resulted in a charge of grand larceny. States other than Virginia have raised the threshold for grand larceny to $1000, so the charges in another community most likely would have been considered simple larceny. However in Virginia, the threshold is still $200, thus the charge of grand larceny.

● What damages were done to the home, at what cost for repairs?

● How might this young man be held responsible for his misbehavior?● How might he realize the effect of his actions on the victim or community and “make things right?"

● How might he best learn about the effects of his ongoing use of drugs?

These questions might have resulted in other alternatives: a suspended sentence, probation, fine, counseling, community service, house arrest, drug treatment, or restorative approaches, where Jim would have been supported in facing his victim and working out a plan to repair the harm done, both relationally and financially.

One might even ask whether other alternatives to incarceration might have been more readily accessible if he had been a Caucasian male rather than a "person of color".

At the time of this writing, Jim has already served five months of incarceration, at a cost per inmate of some $26,000 per year.Meanwhile he owes thousands in court and attorney fees he needs to be able to pay off.In addition, his time behind bars has cost his family approximately $200 a month for supplemental nutritious food, toiletries and medical copays, along with thefamily having to pay $1 a day for "jail rent".

Minimum wages lost in this six-month time period would add up to $7800.

Financial costs for the time it will take for Jim to get re-established with a job, housing, and transportation will likely fall on parents for at least the first year, and possibly through his entire three years of probation.Should hetake to the streets and become homeless, the costs would then fall on the community.

And then there are the hidden "social” costs of Jim's incarceration:

● the likelihood that he will reoffend, given that his underlying drug issues were not addressed;

● the stigma Jim now faces, with his crime history, in finding work, housing, enlisting in the armed services, further education, and marriage;

● the criminogenic effect of incarceration, which reinforces maladaptive behavior and survival strategies.In Jim’s case, these could include:

learned helplessness;

learned violence, in order to defend oneself against other inmates;

learning (from other inmates) how to make methamphetamines;

disrespect for authority and for other humans;

the role modeling (sometimes constructive, often not) observed from the jail staff inauthority over him.

These are troubling questions and issues posed by only one young adult experiencing incarceration and facing the future. What if we multiply them by 337 (juvenile population projected in 2017) or 18,000 (adult population in local jails in Virginia projected in 2017?

What are those implications for our community and our state?Click on Comments below for an engaging response.

Saturday, July 22, 2017

As long as I can remember, I've always loved ice cream, a treat we didn't often get to indulge in when I was growing up.

Last weekend Alma Jean and I were enjoying some of this addictively delicious frozen fare with our son Brad and one of his apartment mates.

At least "enjoyed" seemed like the right word until I read the Nutrition Facts label on the pint of Trader Joe's Ultra Chocolate Premium in front of me. The "Facts" I read there were cause for alarm, especially since they were based on a serving of a mere half cup (105g) of this favorite dessert:Total Fat 16g 24% of daily valueSaturated Fat 10g 48% of daily valueCholesterol 65mg 22% of daily value

This was doubly distressing in light of the fact that I'd like to lose some weight and that my doctor has prescribed some Lipitor to reduce my cholesterol.

Then there was the additional realization that my normal "serving" of this favorite type of dessert is likely to be in excess of a full cup rather than a paltry half.

So, sad to say, my lifelong love affair with ice cream, especially the premium, extra delicious kind, may need to come to an end. Or at the very least, I'll need to check the nutrition labels a lot more carefully in the interest of maintaining good health and a lower weight.

Given the kind of food addict I am, I may need your help to staying on the wagon on this one.

When my grandparents were teenagers, they traveled, mostly on foot, across Europe. They were "undocumenteds" in every country through which they passed.They obtained visas to enter Canada, where they met, married and raised a family.

They lived. They were Jews. The remainder of their families did not survive. Canada, the United States and all other countries stopped admitting Jews in the years leading up to the war.

When I drove by your house today and saw your yard sign, I felt some consolation. I felt that your sign honored the family that was lost, because you were telling your community, "Never again."

Sunday, July 16, 2017

On an early morning walk today while visiting our son Brad, we saw 16 yard signs expressing welcome for immigrant neighbors. These were all within a five-block residential area bounded by Meade St. and Thomas Boulevard in the North Point Breeze section of Pittsburgh where he lives.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

I am disappointed that your cookbook includes a recipe for tacos. To me, that's not Mennonite food.

- anonymous comment on Mennonite Girls Can Cook

Herald Press recently published a beautifully illustrated book called Mennonite Girls Can Cook. As a Menno who loves good food it's hard not to like this attractive work by ten very creative members of my faith.

Their use of the label "Mennonite" raises a question, however. Doesn't this just add to a stereotype that Mennonites are fair skinned middle-class North American folks of Swiss, German, Dutch or Russian descent who live north of the Rio Grande?

The fact is that there are now more Anabaptists/Mennonites on the continent of Africa alone (nearly 700,000 according to the latest 2015 stats), than there are in Canada and the United States combined. And their numbers are growing far more rapidly than ours.

As another example of this growing diversity, there are more Mennonites on the subcontinent of India, some 250, 000 in all, than there are members of our entire Mennonite Church USA, now well under 100,000 in number and declining.

To be fair, the numbers of all Anabaptist related groups in North America is over 683,000. But oddly, Mexican and Central American Mennonites are officially counted with their South American counterparts rather than as a part of the actual continent they share with Canada and the US.

This is presumably because their culture, language and ethnicity are seen as being more similar to fellow believers further south, but doesn't this represent a subtle form of bias on the part of those of us of European descent?

I know the good folks who produced this cookbook in no way intended to convey any such bias. And the fact that they are dedicating all of their royalties to programs to feed hungry children is beyond commendable. I'm simply using this example to highlight an issue I feel deserves attention.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

At first glance, last Sunday's lectionary readings seemed like a hodgepodge of texts lacking a common theme. But at our house church we reflected on the following: 1) human beings from the beginning are hardwired by their Creator for relationships; 2) while the most primal and most intimate of these is marriage, the Bible has something far greater in mind than just the creation of biological families; and 3) the Biblical drama ends with people of every nation and tribe and language celebrating a royal wedding that knows no end.

Surprisingly for the patriarchal times in which they were written, the second chapter of the Song of Songs, along with Sunday's Psalm 45 "royal wedding" text, portray conjugal unions as celebrations of love that are mutual, joyful and intimate. This makes marriage a wonderful metaphor for the kind of honeymoon-like and deeply satisfying bonds we form in our experiences of worship, as a people who are completely won over as God's beloved and forever Bride.

The Genesis 24 account of Abraham's servant, who is led to just the right young woman as wife for his son Isaac, has its parallel in the story found in the fourth chapter of John's gospel. In that passage Jesus is both the seeking servant and the royal Messiah. At Jacob's well, he wins over a receptive Samaritan crowd brought to him by an unlikely woman from the town who comes there to draw water. At this ordinary time and place we sense a rumor of a God-blessed wedding, one bringing together God and God's people, a united new God-family that will include even unorthodox Samaritans. And just as Rebekah leaves all to cast her lot with Isaac, who loved her deeply from the moment he met her, so Jesus's disciples everywhere are loved into leaving all behind and casting their lot with him.

It's like a wedding. You "leave" one family and you "cleave" in the formation of a new one. And in Sunday's Matthew 11 text, Jesus is making what sounds like this kind of proposal to would-be disciples, "Come to me, all who are weary and weighed down, and I will give you rest," or as Clarence Jordan translates it, "I will give you zest.'' "Take my yoke on you (that is, companion with me) and learn from me, for I am gentle and gracious of heart, and you will find rest in your inner being." In other words, you will find a place of home.

So whether in our human relationships or in the intimacies of the spirit, we find ourselves enthralled, blessed, joined together in relationships that offer deep joy and great purpose. Life becomes a kind of wedding rehearsal, in which the divinely betrothed learn to live lives of integrity, fidelity and deep passion.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Inmates at the Buckingham Correctional Center had a special reason to celebrate the Fourth this year upon receiving news that six of their friends and fellow detainees had been released June 29 by the Virginia Parole Board. More than one of them cried when they received their parole grant letter, many having been denied parole year after year and coming to believe they they were going to die in prison.

Charles Zellers writes, "There is a God and His holy hands are working to correct the injustice that has been done to parole-eligible inmates throughout the years. Those who were lost were pulled down to their lowest point in life until they were humbled before God and then He showed them mercy and brought them up out of the pits of hell making them victorious. I truly believe that these individuals will now be model citizens in society. God truly is a mighty God."

Henry Tipold, 72,
incarcerated 38 years.

Zellers is suggesting we write letters of thanks to the Governor and to members of the Virginia Parole Board, thanking them for offering these men their hard earned independence and encouraging the Board to continue to give deserving "old-law" men and women (incarcerated before 1995) their second chance at a new life.

Ever rising costs and overcrowding inside Virginia's jails and prison adds to the urgency of these releases for the men and women sentenced prior to the 1995 so-called Truth-in-Sentencing (TIS) Law.

Another reason to release such inmates, he points out, is because many of the older prisons need remodeling. Some do not have air-conditioning and become unbearably hot, well exceeding temperatures in even animal shelters, those generally not to exceed 80 degrees. Inmates are allowed to purchase one eight-inch fan if they can afford the nearly thirty dollar cost.

Also from Zellers, "Hopefully, in the near future, all of DOC''s facilities will provide reentry for the inmates being released so that they will not be sent to other reentry facilities where they could be victimized by VADOC staff and inmates. This is why "old-law" and "new-law" inmates should not be housed together. This practice of VADOC has been going on since the 1995 TIS Law was implemented, and many parole-eligible inmates have lost their parole and good-time release dates because of those new-law inmates. BKCC has an entire 64-man housing unit that could be used as a reentry program to help get parole-eligible inmates out of the VADOC.

"Each inmate being released from VADOC is mandated to go through a five-month reentry program, even after they have served 20-50 consecutive years inside VADOC. Presently, all of these programs are currently filled which is slowing down the release process. More reentry units are needed or VADOC has to speed-up the reentry programs, or even waive the reentry step if the parolee has a stable home plan and individuals on the outside to help them."

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Yesterday we celebrated the "commencement"
of Rachel Anna Stoltzfus, 91, who graduated
summa cum laude from this life May 13, 2017.

Rachel Stoltzfus and her late husband Robert made a profound impact on the lives of dozens of international students for whom they provided lodging and hospitality over many years.Yesterday a number of them shared their stories at Rachel's memorial service, one of the most moving experiences I've had in a long time. The following is my meditation at that service, held at the former location of the New Covenant Church of which Rachel and Robert were charter members:

***********************

Welcome to this special service in memory of a truly unforgettable woman, Rachel Stoltzfus. She is an inspiring example of how great saints can come in small packages, an illustration of how God has chosen the quiet and un-acclaimed people in the world to confound and put to shame the lofty and the mighty. As in the the Magnificat announced by Mary, God scatters the proud and haughty ones, and has exalted the lowly, the meek, those who will indeed inherit the earth.

I feel blessed and honored to have been this woman’s pastor over the past couple of decades, and now to celebrate with you this commencement ceremony in honor of Rachel Anna Stoltzfus, who graduated summa cum laude (with greatest honor) as a part of the God's great class of 2017. Throughout her life she quietly and faithfully served so many people in so many ways and over so many years.

In the “Heroes of Faith” chapter in the Bible (Hebrews 11) we are given examples of numerous ordinary persons who, by faith, accomplished something that put them on God’s honor roll, the lesser known and the well known alike, people like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, and others. The passage ends with “It would take too long to recount all the stories of faithful ones who trusted God for a better future than they experienced in this life, of whom the world was not worthy", or as another translation has it, "they were too good for this world.”

Today we add our sister Rachel to that growing list in God’s story, people who are to be commended for a faith—not so much a faith based on believing certain things in spite of the evidence, but as Clarence Jordan once put it, a faith that acts in faithful ways in spite of the cost or the consequences.

And Rachel reminds me of the words of another text, the one that encourages us to not be so concerned about an outward beauty associated with lots of jewelry, or fashionable clothes or regularly permed hair, but a beauty that comes from deep inside, the charm of a gentle and quiet spirit. Rachel was beautiful in every way (just look at the photos in your program!) but in terms of an inner beauty, she was truly a knock-out.

She wasn’t just some nice and submissive and passive person, but impactful in a very special and powerful way. In fact, the more I thought about doing this little meditation, the more it struck me how much the world would be literally transformed if everyone lived like Rachel.

Think about it.

What if everyone welcomed strangers and foreigners and international students like Rachel and Robert did? What if all of us, like her, wouldn’t care whether our house looked like a page from Better Homes and Gardens? What if we lived as though what really mattered was not how well a home is furnished, but how well our hearts were furnished to be open to simply loving people, no matter where they were from, no matter whether they were Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or atheist? Or if anyone needed a welcoming meal, or a room to stay in, and if we had one available, they would be warmly loved and well nurtured. That mindset would change the world.

And if we all lived and loved like Rachel, there would be an end to ugly church splits, to hate speech, to harsh words and hurtful gossip, to unspeakably awful wars and violence of all kinds. We would be experiencing the kind of shalom God envisioned when the world was first created, a world in which nothing is marred and nothing is missing, where God’ will is being done here on earth in and among us, as it is in heaven. It would be a world in which people were prized above possessions, where no one was ever left to starve or be without clothes or shelter, where there was no competition for attention or praise or high honor, but a simple life of devotion to loving God and to loving every neighbor as oneself. That’s Rachel. And hers was never a piety for piety’s sake, but a life of prayer and of hymn singing (she loved singing, and knew more hymns by memory than most of us know, period) and of church fellowship that kept her focused, not just on a heaven in the sweet by and by, but on bringing more of God’s heaven-based blessings to bear on earth in the here and now.

And what if we all were as careful in the stewardship of the earth as Rachel, on her little demonstration plot around her house just a stone’s throw from here? What if we, like her, took time to grow more things to harvest and preserve and share with others, and to till and enrich the soil and whatever it produced, carefully caring for fruit trees and berry bushes and grape vines as she did? And what if we were to reuse, recycle, reclaim, make do in such a way that we, like her, would leave an almost invisible carbon or any other footprint? Surely if everyone were the kind of earth steward Rachel was, the planet would be spared the threat of global warming, the air would be pure, the water clean, the oceans teeming with life. She left the world, and the earth, a better place than she found it.

To some, she might have seemed thrifty to a fault, so careful was she not to waste even the tiniest bit of table scrap that could be composted or that could be food for some bird or animal or human being. But as focused as she was on being thrifty and sparing in her spending, this wasn’t at all about hoarding up more treasure here on earth for herself, but about being able to be truly generous with what she had. As an example, sometimes when she did have some things that needed to be taken to the landfill, she would accept my offer to add it to whatever I was taking to dispose of. But it was always hard to do anything like that for her that she didn’t want to compensate me for it, to help pay for my gas or for my time. Thrifty but generous.

Sometimes it’s easy to think pessimistically about the world’s future. And if its survival depended on the policies of generals and politicians and prime ministers and presidents, that future would be dark indeed. But God continues to entrust the earth’s future to ordinary people like you and me, like Rachel and Robert, like the everyday saints who faithfully and quietly keep on doing what’s right, who consistently do justice, love mercy and to walk humbly with their God and share generously with others, just like Rachel.

It's good that the future of the world isn’t just left to the world’s scientists and PhD’s and its preachers and its prophets, but on those everyday people whose wisdom runs deep and who in a stubborn and quiet way become a preserving salt, a persistent light, a transforming leaven that outlasts and outshines every other force in the world.

So as we say our farewells to Rachel, let’s make sure her wisdom, her ways, God’s ways, Jesus's ways, live on in us, wisdom being a way of loving and living that we can look back on, as we are doing with Rachel’s life today, and celebrate as genuinely enduring and satisfying.

From the book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible:

Listen as Wisdom calls out!

she cries aloud,

Listen to me! ...Choose my instruction rather than silver,

my knowledge rather than pure gold.

For wisdom is far more valuable than rubies.

Nothing you desire can compare with it.

...Listen to my instruction and be wise.

...For whoever finds me finds life

and receives favor from the Lord.

And from the New Testament:

The wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.

Thanks be to God, and to Rachel for that demonstration of wisdom that results in a radically transformed life, and one that could literally change the world.

According to Jesus, life's "Final Exam" is like a kind of multiple choice test, as in “I was hungry and you… a) fed me, b) ignored me or c) outsourced the task of feeding the hungr to the Salvation Army.”

In Rachel’s case, the answer was clearly “a”. Check.

The same with the following items in the "exam":

I was thirsty and you… gave me water. Check.

I was a stranger and you… invited me into your home. Check.

I was cold and without shelter and you… clothed and housed me. Check.

I was sick and in prison, and you…visited me. Check.

To those the King will say, "You've passed the finals." "Come you blessed of my Father, into the new heaven and the new earth prepared for you from the creation of the world.” Along with people everywhere who have first experienced God's mercy and grace, then spend the rest of their lives as channels of it.

So it is with joy that we commit our sister Rachel into God's everlasting care and to her eternal reward. And in is in light of Rachel's motto of “only one life, it will soon be past, and only what’s done for Christ (and to the least of these) will last,” that we close with these words, “So then, dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

AMEN

**************************************

The family buried the urn with Rachel's remains next to her husband's at the Weavers church cemetery after the noon reception. There we affirmed Psalm 23 and received the following Irish blessing:

May the blessing of light be with you--

light outside and light within.

May the sunlight shine upon you and warm your heart

‘til it glows like a great peat fire,

So that the stranger may come and warm himself by it,

and also a friend.

May a blessed light shine out of the two eyes of you

like a candle set in two windows of a house,

bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.

May the blessing of rain--the sweet soft rain--

fall upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean.

May it leave many a shining pool where the blue of heaven shines, and sometimes a star.

May the blessing of earth--the good, rich earth--be with you.

May you ever have a kindly greeting for those you pass

as you go along its roads.

May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it,

tired at the end of the day.

May the earth rest easy over you when at the last you lie under it.

May the earth rest so lightly over you

that your spirit may be out from under it quickly,

and up, and off, and on its way to God.

from An Irish Blessing, a Photographic Interpretation, by Cyil A. and Renee Travis Reilly

Monday, July 3, 2017

Were Virginia Mennonites to experience a revival of generosity this year for the desperate needs of millions of war and famine refugees, how much revenue might our September 29-30 Virginia Relief Sale generate for Mennonite Central Committee?

Last year's total was over $360,000, the second highest amount ever. This year's Sale is adding a cash contribution option as a way of greatly increasing that number.The 2017 SOS ("Sharing Our Surplus") initiative aims at enlisting extra support through generous check, credit card and other gifts, a plan especially designed for folks not inclined to participate in the annual auction.

In a recent optimistic moment I suggested that a wealthy community like ours should be able to easily raise a million dollars annually through this kind of event. Of course that idea has been dismissed as preposterous, and even I realize that kind of miracle is less than likely.

But let's do some math, based on a modest "$100 plus $100 x 5000 Plan", as follows:

Let's assume that of the estimated 10,000 attendees at the Sale, 5000 earn some kind of regular income ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 a year. Without limiting any of their other charitable giving, let's assume it were possible for each of these persons to set aside a minimum average of at least $200 annually (or 1% or more of their income, whichever is greater)to contribute at the relief sale, as follows: 1) $100 average for food, auction and other purchases, and 2) another $100 average as their tax deductible gift for refugee relief.

Those with more means and greater motivation, of course, would need to spend more than $100 in food and auction purchases and/or give more than $100 as an outright gift in order to compensate for those who give or spend lesser amounts in response to this kind of need.

But that's all it would take to raise a cool million for MCC.

But is this kind of $200 (average) annual giving splurge at all reasonable or possible?

Think about it. $200 is significantly less than many of us might spend on any one of the following in a year's time:

The total of all of our expenditures on such items alone (all completely out of reach for families living in a refugee camp) would likely be staggering. So if we fail to reach anywhere near a million dollar goal, it won't be because it would require some kind of miracle to accomplish.

A more likely explanation might be that like Dr. Seuss's Grinch, our middle class American hearts have become several sizes too small.

About Me

I was born as child number eight in an Amish family in rural Nowata
County, Oklahoma. Our family moved to Stuarts Draft, Virginia, by train
in 1946.

At age 21 I enrolled in Eastern Mennonite College (now
University)in Harrisonburg to major in elementary education, and there
met the love of my life, Alma Jean Wert, a Home Economics major from
Juniata County, Pennsylvania. We both taught at Eastern Mennonite High
School, and I later became an ordained Mennonite minister. We have three
grown children and six grandchildren (the youngest being twins!). I
have a seminary degree as well as a master's degree in counseling and since
1988 have been a marriage and family counselor and pastor of a local
house church.

I had my first book published in 2007, Lasting Marriage:
The Owners' Manual, by Herald Press.